{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/x05x63d264/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Ruth Morgan "]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["1991-07-30 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["audio file"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Society of Teachers of Family Medicine","Dr. Ruth Morgan","family medicine","family physician"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Dr. Ruth Morgan (personal name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["english (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Morgan_Ruth_1991.07.30_-_Side_1.mp3"]},"duration":2016.488,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/278/310/original/Morgan_Ruth_1991.07.30_-_Side_1.mp3?1750859882","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":2016.488,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310/transcript/81398","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Ruth Morgan interview transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310/transcript/81398/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Side 1: I had talked to Ralph about how the decision was made to come to Sylva. I wondered if you could give me your re collections.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Well, we were in with the -- finishing up his residency. He planned to do two years residency. At the end of one year he debated whether he would come on and start practice and then come back at a later time and finish his residency. I said, absolutely not, that he’d never get back. When he started his practice, it would just snowball and it would get so difficult and I knew we had no children, hoped to and it would be much more difficult to come back. We already -- everything and stay another year. So he finally agreed with me that yes, that was the best thing to do. We did stay the two years. And then he thought very much, of settling in Winston Salem. In fact, he thinks he told me a lot more his ideas for settling there than he ever did really. I didn’t realize he had seriously thought about settling there but he had. -- would you like to? I said, yeah, wherever you want to go is the place we’ll go because you’re the person earning the living and you’re the person that’s prepared for this and all. It doesn’t really matter to me. So I didn’t like the idea of the city but Winston was all right, it’s an interesting place. So then he got with -- showed him what needs there were out here and how much needed the few doctors there were and of course Winston, like all cities was full of doctors. So he decided it would be good to come to Sylva. I don’t even remember when he said it, but he talked about it that he’d like to come out here and work together and all and I said, it’s fine. I was thinking inside myself, oh, how horrible that place. It was a place that I used to… the year before, or a couple years before we got married when I first -- where I’d done social work and then I was here to Murphy, doing emergency, emergency relief administration days. -- a job was headquartered in Murphy and was supervised -- Western State, the six western counties out there. I thought it sounded exciting and I would do it. So I did and I was thrilled to death because I lived in Murphy in what they call the Regal Hotel, which was anything but regal. Right across the street was the courthouse and that’s where my office was. I was used to having to go 45 minutes to an hour on the streetcar in Cleveland to work and here, I could walk across the street in 5 minutes. It was wonderful. And then I drove around through all these counties, I’d go to different counties every day and did supervisory work with the caseworkers and with the casework supervisor and so on. I was just thrilled to death because it was so beautiful and I hadn’t been -- and it was just great. But Sylva was the place I didn’t like most of all. It was the most uninteresting place and the people weren’t very cooperative. I just didn’t like Sylva at all and I thought, oh, am I going to live there the rest of my life? But I never said a work, I wasn’t going to say a word because I did believe in my heart, definitely, that I should go where he wanted to go because he was the one who was the doctor and he should know much better than I. So we came to Sylva. After I had been here a week or so, it was just fine. The people were nice, as nice as they could be and I was just happy as a lark here.\n\nYou said in a sense, you would have preferred, when this decision about where to go came about you would have preferred a smaller community to a large city?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes. Much prefer a smaller community, yes.\n\nWhy would that be? What was behind your preference for small?\n\nRuth Morgan:  I thought people were much more friendly and I felt there would be… if they were friendly you’d get acquainted more quickly with all the people. I felt you’d have more opportunity to be in groups than in a city because if you wanted to play bridge or something like that, it’s sometimes hard to get into a group. I don’t know, I guess because when I grew up, Asheville was small and I grew up in it. I guess I was always used to that and I never cared about the city. I like the advantages of the city but I felt that we were near enough so we could get -- and that kind of thing.\n\nOne part of you wished to go to a smaller community but then the smaller community was not one you were too fond of, from what you’d heard.\n\nRuth Morgan:  That’s right. But then I realized with the university and growing all the time, there were different things happening all the time in the community.\n\nWas Western Carolina here when you lived here?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes, but it only had about 700 students. They were trying to get to 1,000 that first year we were here, they were trying to get an enrollment of 1,000 and I forget how many they have now, 20,000 or something. It’s just amazing.\n\nThere’s a lot of concerns, particularly that women will express about going to smaller communities that have to do with isolation, worried about things like schools and a variety of other things. Were those things that were of concern to you?\n\nRuth Morgan:  No. Of course the children were not of school age then, they were small but I did know the Slagel children went to the school in Cullowhee was the grade in high school that was connected with the university. Training school. And I felt that our children could probably go there and that’s where they did go. So I had that to look forward to, I didn’t have to worry about that. As far as isolation is concerned, we had a house in town, it was a good place, it was at the end of the road so we didn’t have to worry about the children in traffic and all that and it had a great big yard. A country house. You could see daylight between some of the pieces of wood but we managed to keep warm and all right. People were, as I say, friendly and there wasn’t any time before… there was plenty to do, we had the church and everything. Everything I liked to do and then some. With three children, I kept busy. And I didn’t want to play bridge. They tried to get me playing bridge when I first came and I said, I do not play bridge, I am not going to play bridge and I have not played bridge. I did get caught in two parties at the very beginning that I couldn’t get out of. I suffered through. I used to play bridge in high school and all but after that, I never was crazy about it. It’s a social grace I think one ought to have but I don’t have it.\n\nI feel very similarly about it. It has a certain connotation to it.\n\nRuth Morgan:  I know people -- two or three afternoons a week just playing bridge. I have a lot more interesting things to do than that. I always had plenty to do and I guess that’s why I didn’t feel lonely. I do think that every young doctor’s wife has to… it’s a lot to being a doctor’s wife. In other words, you’ve got to make up your mind early in the game that he’s never going to be home, or very, very little. That’s the way it was when I came along. The first 30 days we were here, he was gone every night but one, I think and I thought, oh my. And then I thought, don’t get to feeling sorry for yourself now because this is the way it’s going to be, you might just as well face it, you might just as well build your philosophy to meet it and think of things to do. I stayed home with the children so I did other things. I used to sew and I used to do all kinds of things. I made all the children’s clothes, all those things. I read and those things all kept me busy. I didn’t like being by myself with the children but that was just my personal problem. I got over that too. -- at first because the house was kind of away from other houses and I was used to living in a neighborhood but I got over that.\n\nThe other part of that is this whole feeling of… what I’m curious about is being in a small community and being a doctor’s wife, in a sense, even though you had a life that you built for yourself, your kids, things you do that are not medicine, I don’t think you ever worked in the office or…\n\nRuth Morgan:  No, (Inaudible). But I never worked in the office (Inaudible)\n\nBut still, you had a life that was separate.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Oh yes, it was separate.\n\nIt was intruding enough in your day to have him off and doing things.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes.\n\nWere there difficulties with community people seeing you as an extension of Ralph and his work and somehow intruding in your life?\n\nRuth Morgan:  I think I kind of felt that in the beginning too. People would meet you on the street and say, Aunt so and so is -- what’s the matter with her? Tell me what he says about her. I said, he doesn’t talk about his patients at home. I never know who is his patient and who isn’t is patient and I would not ask him anything about that. And pretty soon, people learned that I didn’t and I was so glad that I didn’t know, that he didn’t talk about them because I could honestly say, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about it.\n\nThat’s one of the issues, confidentiality. I always talk to people about whether they and their wives sit down and talk explicitly about what you talk about patients, you talk about something that’s confidential. And they all say… interesting responses, there’s a range that’s broad about that. Do you remember having any discussions in any kind of formal way about what…\n\nRuth Morgan:  About patients you mean?\n\nRalph saying, what we talk about, I have to really be careful. Kind of an understanding…\n\nRuth Morgan:  I think he knew. I’d been in social work and I’d been lots of things and there was a level of confidence and you had to be quiet and I think he knew I wouldn’t.\n\nOn the other hand, I think he’s a man that likes to talk to people.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Oh yes.\n\nHow do you deal with situations where he’d come home or he’d be out in the middle of the night. Would he ever come home and talk about his frustrations, his concerns, about patients or about anything else?\n\nRuth Morgan:  He might say -- we had to bring him to the hospital or something like that but he wouldn’t even say who it was.\n\nIn a sense…\n\nRuth Morgan:  It was just a natural… worked out. I knew that you didn’t talk about what doctors… that they didn’t talk to you about patients and you didn’t talk about patients.\n\nA lot of wives, particularly solo physicians are in very small communities end up being kind of an emotional confidant. You’ve got to have a way of unloading your frustration and concern, again, with the understanding that that’s something…\n\nRuth Morgan:  I think Ralph should have unloaded more sometimes because I think he kept a lot of it in.\n\nIf he doesn’t do that with you, it’s got to be someone that’s not only skilled, but knowledgeable and where do you do that?\n\nRuth Morgan:  He keeps an awful lot of it to himself. He’s done it more in the later years, unloaded more but by and large, he’s always just kept it to himself. I felt that it was bad because I think he ought to let it out. I think it’s a lot better for you.\n\nDo you feel like your family was put in a difficult situation by being a doctor’s family?\n\nRuth Morgan:  They think so. They were, I think… Ralph Jr., I had an ice green Buick, one of the prettiest cars I’ve ever had, one that Ralph gave me one Christmas morning. One of the nicest things he could give me, a beautiful Buick and it was lovely and I just loved driving it. We just got rid of it not too long ago. Ralph Jr., I’d take him down to little league and he’d make me let him out a block or two before we got there. I used to say, what’s the matter, are you ashamed of your mother or what? No. He wouldn’t say anything. But I’d let him out and when I picked him up, I’d pick him up away from there. What it was, he didn’t want to ride in that car because people at school teased the children all the time, they’d say, oh, you can have so and so because your father’s a doctor. That’s why you ride in that grand car because your father’s a doctor. It was very hard learning in that respect because the kids did tease them an awful lot about being a doctor’s kid. And the funny thing was, they didn’t have much in the way of clothes or anything as some of the other children. Some of the other children’s families spent much more money on clothes because that was real important to them, than we spent on clothes because we didn’t feel it was that important. If they have nice, clean clothes and nice looking, and the kids oftentimes wanted more clothes than they had and fancier clothes and I wouldn’t get it for them. They had a lot of teasing because of being doctor’s children.\n\nDid they talk about that?\n\nRuth Morgan:  They never did much until they got older. They talked about it a lot more since then than they did back then.\n\nMy sense is, there’s not a whole lot that needs to change because you can’t change who you are.\n\nRuth Morgan:  You can’t. I don’t know whether they do it to the doctor’s children now or not but they certainly did then.\n\nThere’s still a certain amount of pressure. I remember when I was in grade school, there was only one person I knew whose dad was a doctor and there was the sense that this kid was something special even though he wasn’t really. There was this connection with somebody who everybody else considered to be somebody special. If I’d grown up in a church where the pastor or minister could be married and have kids it would be the same thing. People in small town, they talk a lot about, particularly with the wives roles, the only thing analogous to a doctor’s wife is a preacher’s wife or minister’s wife. But the minister’s wife generally has a defined role. She comes as a package deal, whereas a doctor’s wife is a much more nebulous kind of…\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes, they are.\n\nWhat did you do for support… Did you feel any kind of… the people you could go talk to with frustrations and the kids and normal things.\n\nRuth Morgan:  There were two or three families around that we made -- Mead Corporation then, was in full force here. The personnel manager, his wife and Ralph and all, were real good friends and we used to do lots of things together and I could talk to her. And Dr. Slagel’s wife, I could talk to her. She did a lot toward helping us get settled and so on and so forth. Those two particularly I was close to. I could sound off of them if I needed it.\n\nIt’s important to have.\n\nRuth Morgan:  It is, it is important that you have somebody to sound off to. Ralph is such an idealist, I’ve never had sounded off to much to him because he would interpret it the wrong way. I just feel that way about it, we all feel better about it.\n\nSo complaining is not something that’s in the cards.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes. That’s why I just don’t do that.\n\nIt helps a lot when you’re working through some difficult things but it doesn’t help sometimes when there’s intrapersonal or family things.\n\nRuth Morgan:  No.\n\nWere there any times that you could think of where it crossed your mind or you actually talked about not staying in Sylva?\n\nRuth Morgan:  No, never did. No. After we started, we were all set to stay. The only thing I remember and I wondered if he was going to mention it this morning, he didn’t so I don’t know if wanted it on record or not but I remember one time we had their county administrator here.\n\nHe talked about that.\n\nRuth Morgan:  At that time he was going to Waynesville some and Waynesville said he couldn’t go in the hospital there unless he was a resident of Haywood County. So all that was kind of mixed up -- administrator. One or two of the doctors down here -- at some point there. He said something about, well, maybe what we ought to do is just move to Waynesville. I said, Ralph, when we’ve got this house and all this property and everything else here, I said, I don’t see how we could possibly do it and I said, I don’t think you would want them saying that they had run you off to Waynesville. That’s the last I heard of that. He never mentioned going to Waynesville again.\n\nYou really didn’t like… you didn’t at any point didn’t feel like…\n\nRuth Morgan:  No. I just felt it would work itself out here and that I --.\n\nThe other thing that happens when you’re in a small community and your husband or anybody in your family is highly visible, that you hear things that are said negative.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes.\n\nIs that something that…\n\nRuth Morgan:  No, I never heard very much said negative. \n\nIt’s hard for me to imagine that but I’m sure that…\n\nRuth Morgan:  About myself… I just always put it down to the fact that people are careful enough to say it when I leave. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but that’s what I’ve always put it down as. I never fretted much about it. My philosophy, more or less I guess, is that life is make up things you like and you don’t like but you don’t complain all the time about them. If you don’t like them you try to change so you will like them or else you just live with them. And the more you make yourself miserable, then you make other people miserable and then what have you got? Nothing. I think it’s so much better to just take it in stride, so to speak and make the best of it.\n\nWho are the models in your life for learning to think that way?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Well, I don’t know. I think probably my father and mother because they’re the only ones I had. I’m an only child. They were pretty much that way. They didn’t gripe and complain about things, they got along.\n\nThere seems to be real differences among people. There’s always somebody that’s --and others just say, well, that’s the way it is, I have to move on.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes. I know somebody who’s always complaining to somebody. Everything that goes wrong.\n\nIt feels like such a miserable life.\n\nRuth Morgan:  I think so too. Makes yourself miserable and makes everybody else miserable and there’s no point in that, no good in that as far as I can see.\n\nWhen you came to this town, as you thought about where you would go, did you see in some way, and I don’t know how to say this exactly, not a responsibility but that there’d be some expectation that you would be engaged in the life of the community?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Oh yes, I was sure I would. And I did.\n\nBut that’s something you thought before you came.\n\nRuth Morgan:  Oh yes, sure. I just knew that I would be and Helen Slagel for one, I knew she’d been involved a lot in things and she’d been here for awhile. I just knew I would be and did get involved in a lot of things. -- a lot. I’ve enjoyed every bit of it because I made new friends all the time and I felt like I was doing something to be helpful.\n\nWhat kinds of things have been projects of yours?\n\nRuth Morgan:  As I say, I helped in the cancer clinic quite a bit, enjoyed that very much. I did a little bit of church work. I belonged to a club called Twentieth Century Club, it’s a women’s club which I swore I’d never belong to. I did.\n\nAt least you didn’t play bridge, right?\n\nRuth Morgan:  No, at least I didn’t play bridge. And it was community… what they did was community projects of various kinds and I helped with decorating, putting flowers and everything up and down the back street, doing other… going to the library and doing other projects for that club.\n\nIs it easier to do that in a town this size --?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yes, a lot easier.\n\n(Dr. Morgan enters)\n\nDr. Morgan:  …clinic there and he just was like this so I saw who he was, I saw -- compensated and I realized he had a cane and he could barely take a step. Next week he came back and I didn’t know him. Really. He walked in. He thought I was a miracle man of course. I ran into him in town, he lived about 5 years after that. He’s a man that’s -- from medicine. (Inaudible) … had been married but they lived together. They hobbled around but they were weak and they had no business carrying water the 100 yards that they had to carry it. I had a little phrase, heard a little phrase about somebody offering help to elderly, if you see anybody that chops wood or totes water, just let me know. I helped them up to the house -- I sent that to her. You see them empty pails out there? If you want to tote water for me, just get busy and tote it. I carried four big buckets of water about 100 yards or more and put them on the stoop there. Thank you doctor and closed the door.\n\nRuth Morgan:  I hadn’t heard that one.\n\nWhen I was here, you had a red, was it a Ford?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Chevrolet. Still have it.\n\nYou do?\n\nDr. Morgan:  Yes. The body’s in real bad shape. If I ever get a couple of grand, I’m going to get it fixed up, it’s got 276,000 miles on it and it was a real car. Matter of fact, it was the first car I ever bought for her in 19--. I got all four of my children down in the pasture at the bottom and I drove all that distance with it and everybody in this county… people still ask me, doc, what did you ever do with that red Chevrolet?\n\nOne of the things you told me was about what was. When you were driving, and you said, do you ever wonder why I have a red car? And I said, I have no idea. You told me about how when you drove up into the hollers and places where there were some revenuers around, you wanted to make sure they knew that the doctor was coming.\n\nDr. Morgan:  Everybody knew in the county, I guess.\n\nWe ought to write a letter to the Chevrolet company, it would be good advertising for Chevrolet to put the money into rehab here.\n\nRuth Morgan:  They might pay you something.\n\n276,000 miles and everybody in the county knows about it. You can tell them that Chevrolet -- for you. Who knows?\n\nRuth Morgan:  Yeah, they might do it.\n\n(RECORDING ENDS)","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/3629/collection_resources/150919/file/278310#t=0.0,2016.488"}]}]}]}